Category: mapping

Sustainable development – definition, concepts and philosophy

Sustainable development was first described as, the “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. (Brundtland 1987).

Sustainability is a model for future in which environmental, social and economic considerations are balanced in development activities. It includes an improved quality of life as well. Sustainable development is a way within which many processes and pathways to achieve sustainability say, sustainable agriculture, sustainable production and consumption, good government, research and technology transfer, etc (Unesco 2013).

The Rio Declaration (Earth Summit) contains 27 principles, including:

People are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature;

Eradicating poverty and reducing disparities in living standards in different parts of the world;

Environmental protection is an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it.

These principles can guide the efforts of governments, communities and organizations to define sustainability goals and create programmes to help achieve those goals. In addition to these, global sustainability dialogues includes the following principles as well:-

A systems thinking approach, rather than an approach that looks at problems in isolation should be used. Sustainability issues are linked and part of a “whole.” (Systems thinking is the process of understanding how elements of a system influence one another within the whole.)

Understanding local issues in a global context and recognizing that solutions to local problems can have global consequences.

Considering differing views before reaching a decision or judgment.

Emphasizing the role of public participation in community and governmental decision-making. People whose lives will be affected by decisions must be involved in the process leading to the decisions.

Calling for greater transparency and accountability in governmental decision-making.

After the Earth Summit in 1992, governments and communities were charged with the responsibility of creating sustainability plans. Governments and civil society must identify priorities and create their own sustainability goals. Then, they can create plans to achieve those goals. Ideally, at local level, every community would include sustainability in its plans and projects. It is the responsibility of all sectors of society to work towards a more sustainable future (Unesco 2013) .

Legal obligations to have scientific and planned activities

Village panchayats are local governments with powers inherited from the constitution and which have functions with direct effects on the environment and on the people who live within their geographical jurisdiction. As laid down in the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act 1994: Section 162.A, the standing committee for development is responsible to carry out the development planning, socio-economic planning, spatial planning etc, with some other responsibilities. The standing committee for health and education is responsible for environmental protection in village panchayat levels. Grama Sabha has the powers to formulate schemes to impart awareness on matters of public interest like cleanliness, environmental protection, pollution control etc. Village panchayats also have the general function to Inculcate environmental awareness and motivating local action for environmental upgradation.

As laid down in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 Section 16. (3), every Gram Panchayat shall, prepare a development plan and maintain a shelf of possible works to be taken up under the Scheme as and when demand for work arises. Under this act, Village Panchayats need to prepare a watershed based master plan, as detailed in Watershed Works Manual published by the Ministry of Rural Development, GOI. It’s two chapters: 5. Mapping and 6. Technical Surveys of a Watershed, details the techniques of mapping.

The Common Guidelines for Watershed Development Projects of Government of India, 2008 also details two entire chapters about the need of Technology inputs and GIS while preparing plans: Chapter 2. Guiding Principles – V. Capacity Building and Technology Inputs: Current trends & advances in IT & Remote Sensing and Chapter 3. Technology Inputs – Core GIS facilities, DPR – Resource Maps, Cadastral maps etc.

The Kerala Town and Country Planning Act, 2016, which is enacted for the promotion of planned development and regulation of growth of urban and rural areas in the state with focus on scientific spatial planning and to secure to their present and future inhabitants, sanitary conditions, amenity and convenience and for other matters connected therewith. It makes the village panchayat into a local planning area, and Section 30 of the act mandates the panchayat to develop a master plan, execution plan and a detailed town planning scheme. A master plan (section 34) is a comprehensive plan for a local planning area, conceived within the framework of the district level perspective plan, providing long-term policies, programmes and detailed proposals for spatial development of the use of land and development etc. An execution plan (section 37) is prepared for a period of five years for the local planning area providing the goals, policies, strategies, priorities and programmes for spatial development of the area for the period. A Detailed Town Planning Scheme (section 44, 45) is a comprehensive plan for a particular area within the local planning area, conceived within the framework of the master plan for the local planning area, providing detailed proposals for spatial development in which the use of land and development shall be carried out.

It should be noted that, state government issued a circular to constitute “Sevagram” Gramakendram, and an order is issued framing the detailed work chart of them. It is an extension centre of Village Panchayat in each ward, important statistics, various maps (political, resource, social, drainage, land use) relating to that ward should be displayed for public information. There is a need of maps depicting ward-level details.

In case of the Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY), which was launched by the Prime Minister Sri. Narendra Modi, each member of the parliament can adopt two of the village panchayats in his/her constituency for this programme. It is a rural development programme focusing upon the all-inclusive development of the village panchayats. Para 10 Planning – of the guidelines for SAGY requires to prepare Social Map, Resource map, maps showing Land Use, Water bodies, Irrigation Structures, Physical layout of the land – showing slopes, undulations, drainage patterns etc through participatory approach. It also requires the data collected through the situation analysis should be captured on a GIS platform. Para 13. Use of Technology & Innovations – of the guideline encourages the adoption and adaptation of technology and introduction of innovations in this programme. One among them is (i). Space applications and remote sensing, which will be used in the planning and monitoring of the programmes. Assets will also be mapped using GIS.

So the three tier panchayats are in a phase, seriously stepping onto the field of scientific spatial planning. All the above acts, guidelines etc. mandates the need of scientific spatial planning at the village panchayat level. It is high time to use GIS and remote sensing techniques, and immensely use the geospatial data while preparing plans.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

(Hammer and Champy 2009) define business process reengineering (BPR) as ‘the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of the business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed’. The routine business process in the administration of village panchayats should be optimised so as to improve the overall performance and increase the quality of service. In addition to it, an optimised software based framework should also be developed to achieve this goal.

A technological framework for sustainable development

Even with the presence of an e-governance initiative by the government, almost all of the mandatory and statutory functions of the village panchayats in the state are carried out in an archaic manual decision making process, with less use of intuitive technological support. As a result, most of the obligations village panchayats are entitled, as per the Bruntland Commission Report, Rio Declaration (Earth Summit) and global sustainability dialogues are not efficiently followed.

But many of the insights to follow these obligations can be achieved by the effective integrated use of techniques namely Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Remote Sensing and Geograhical Information Systems, Content Management System (CMS) and Business Intelligence (BI).

ERP – holistic approach.

We are moving through an era in which software development activities for e-governance and local administration is done adopting Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) principles (Pune Municipal Corporation 2016). ERP is a business process management software that allows an organization to use a system of integrated applications to manage the business and automate many back office functions related to technology, services and human resources. It integrates all facets of an operation, including product planning, development etc. (Beal 2016). In other words, the term ERP stands for the idea of all the information and operations needed for an enterprise is coordinated in a computer system with the help of hardware and software. For making this coordination easier, besides computer software and hardware, a unified database also is used storing and managing the different activities of the institution. In short, an ERP software is a system which contain a unified database which store and manage the details of activities, a common computer application which manage the day to day activities, and a unified user interface.

GIS or Geographic Information System

We can define a geographic information system as a computerised system that facilitates the phases of data entry, data analysis and data presentation especially in cases when we are dealing with geo-referenced data. A geographic information system (GIS) is a computer system for capturing, storing, checking, and displaying data related to positions on Earth’s surface. GIS can show many different kinds of data on one map. This enables people to more easily see, analyse, and understand patterns and relationships (National Geographic Society 2011).

Content Management System

A content management system (CMS) is a computer application that supports the creation and modification of digital content using a common user interface and thus usually supporting multiple users working in a collaborative environment. It is possible to store, share and contribute information for a large number of people via this system.

Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence (BI) can be described as “a set of techniques and tools for the acquisition and transformation of raw data into meaningful and useful information for business analysis purposes” (Turner 2016). There are BI softwares available, which can be used for acquiring better insights on the stored data using ERP, GIS and CMS. This will give more precision in the mandatory activities of village panchayats.

FOSS for Local Governments

Free software: Free software is “that comes with permission for anyone to use, copy, and distribute, either verbatim or with modifications, either gratis or for a fee”(‘Gnu.org’ 2016) and essentially the source code of the software is available.Open source software: As per the open source initiative, “Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in” (‘The Open Source Initiative’ 2016).

In common practice, Free, Open source and allied classes of softwares are grouped as one, and referred to as Free/Libré/Open Source Software and abbreviated as FLOSS or FOSS. The active user communities and developer communities around the globe are peculiar for this group of software. The community culture and the democratic decision making process in the FOSS domain has similarities with the decision making process in village panchayats.

Integrated software for Panchayat / Local Administration

In case of panchayats, the advantage of adopting a FOSS based ERP software is that, all the activities notably production, purchase, distribution, collection, human resources, financial affairs, project management, customer relations, assets, etc can be coordinated through a single computer application. For eg, the related activities like building permission, basic tax assessment, basic tax collection, etc can be connected through information sharing by ERP. When building permission is issued, the information will be available in basic tax collection wing.

ERP has a relational database. A change in any record, will be available at once in all parts of the system. All the activities of the integral institutions of a village panchayat can be coordinated through ERP, which is not available in the present software programmes. When an employee login to the ERP, all his/her duties will be listed in that single interface. This will reduce the time taken for doing a specific duty, and will increase accessibility.

In village panchayats, the activities like building regulation, tax collection, licensing resource management, project planning, waste management, agriculture etc are having a spatial component. To manage these kind of spatial activities, a GIS component also can be planned with the ERP software. For eg, the zoning of basic tax assessment can be made available in GIS. If the information which are collected and stored using ERP and GIS is disseminated via web content management system (CMS), the legal obligations due to the section (4) of the Right to Information act can be satisfied easily.

In the free software domain, there are software frameworks and software programmes are available, which are customisable for satisfying the needs of village panchayats.

In village panchayats and in their integral institutions and in the department of panchayats, a FOSS based integrated and centralised software system should be deployed, which essentially having an ERP, a GIS, a CMS, and a BI and data visualisation component. Free and Open Source Software must be given priority, as those will be the sustainable solution for long-term use.

Schematic diagram

Accounting, Budget, Income and Expenditure, Human Resource Management, Project Management, Construction, Meetings, Purchases, Collaborative file management etc can be managed using ERP. Assets, Taxation, Licensing, Land and Water Resource Management, Building rules, Data bank of wetlands and paddy fields, etc can be managed using GIS. Online distribution of various certificates, information dissemination, publication of notices, consolidation of acts, rules, orders, circulars, guidelines etc can be managed using CMS. The CMS can be configured as the tender notices, notifications, project plans, biodiversity registers etc can be published in a decentralised manner from the concerned offices respectively. The information and statistics which are consolidated in this integrated software can be arranged such as those are published automatically, satisfying the section 4 of the RTI Act. A Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) also need to be done for better information dissemination. BI can be generated from the data and information stored in the ERP, GIS and CMS components of the integrated software system.

Existing free and opens source software tools and frameworks can be customised for developing this integrated software system. This approach have many advantages, over the traditional method of developing the software programme from the scratch:

No need of computer servers at the village panchayats, only client computers are needed there. Servers can be deployed only at state level data centre. All the components of the integrated software can be installed at the server in the State data centre. Mirror sites can be used for controlling the traffic in the servers. All the updates can be done only in the centralised server. The overall activities can be monitored in centralised as well as de-centralised manner. It is more easy to manage.

No need to develop the generic components like database management, user interface, printing module etc, as, those are included in those frameworks themselves.

Existing software frameworks in these fields are international projects, and using these software frameworks, customisation and developing modules to satisfy our specific needs, interacting with the developer teams etc will increase our teams capacity and quality. It will bring professionalism in the work as well.

We got an opportunity to introduce OpenStreetMap to the National Service Scheme (NSS) Volunteers of Vidya Academy of Science and Technology (VAST), Thrissur. It was a two days workshop – 18th and 19th June, 2016 and it was wonderful. All of it came through Mr. Manoj Karingamadathil – my friend and an active Wikimedian. It was his college, who studied there four years ago. Mr. Anil, the NSS Coordinator of the college formally invited me to introduce the mapping techniques to the NSS Volunteers. Mr. Kishore Athrasseri, another FOSS GIS enthusiast also joined us for the introductory session to the volunteers.

Vidya Academy of Science and Technology (VAST), Thrissur.

Map of the campus

I didn’t have any clue that it would be such a grand gathering with the presence of Dr. M Abdul Rahman (Pro Vice Chancellor of A P J Abdul Kalam Technological University), Mr. Abdul Jabbar (State Coordinator of NSS Technical Cell), Mrs. Sherly Dileep kumar, President of Velur village panchayat, Mr. T P Kurien, Secretary to the Velur village panchayat and many others. They have big plans to map the Velur village panchayat using the capabilities of NSS volunteers.

Inaugural ceremony

Audience

There were more than 60 volunteers of the college for learning mapping techniques. A few of them were from M E S College of Engineering, Kuttippuram. As OpenStreetMap is the best suitable solution for introducing the mapping techniques for students learning technology, we opted that. After the general introduction to mapping and OSM, the volunteers explored it and created their own user accounts in OSM.

Introductory session

Introductory session

After they familiarised with it,they were grouped into 13 teams (4-5 members in each team) based on the features they are assigned to map, as follows:
1. Campus boundary team
2. Roads team
3. Building (South Block) team
4. Building (North Block) team
5. Building (Main Block) team
6. Mens hostel team
7. Ladies hostel team
8. Workshops team
9. Library team
10. Other buildings team
11. Play grounds team
12. Nakshathra vanam team and
13. Tree count and biodiversity team
For making teams, we collected the details of students and their smartphones via a google form, and randomly grouped them using a spreadsheet, based on the type of their smartphones. The field survey technique was the same as we used during the Koorachundu village panchayat OpenStreetMap mapping party, with the android mobile phones using three apps viz. GPS Logger, OSM Tracker and Keypad Mapper. These apps were shared with the team members at the beginning of the introductory session, using Xender/Bluetooth. After constituting teams, we explained the team members, how to use these apps in the field for collecting data. Then they were sent for field survey (2 hours approximate) after lunch. After the field work, each team gathered in the computer lab and edited the OSM using JOSM and iD with the collected GPS data. We helped them on the basic tagging of the features.

Editing

On the 2nd day of workshop, we and the teams focused on the correction of errors, and checking the correctness of the data they entered to the OSM. It was a thriller experience when we showed the 3D rendering of their campus renedred in http://demo.f4map.com/on the projector. 🙂

3D rendering of the OSM.

3D rendering of the OSM.

We took a photograph of the whole team, after lunch.

The entire team

After 2.30 pm, I left to my home. Manoj lead the session after that, introducing Open Data, Wikipedia, Basic information on Language computing, Internet culture, Free software, Collaborate working (Mailing List, Wiki, IRC, Git..) etc. to the volunteers.

Local news paper covered the event.

For the people who don’t know this college, here is the OSM link of the place:

We the citizens of India collectively and continuously trying every moment, to make this country into a more desirable place on earth. We expect favourable and supportive actions from the higher tiers our whole government machinery, but unfortunately many times it appears not so.

The geospatial information regulation bill(2016) is out for public opinion and many people have already written critiques on various forums. I am not going to repeat all those everything. I am a village panchayat employee as well as a research student. There are a number of researchers in this country who know what geospatial information is, and they can collectively defend themselves. But, only a very few village panchayat employees know the significance of geospatial information in their profession. So I would rather focus on, how this new bill would adversely affect their future.

Months ago, I have written a report on a mapping exercise we have done at the village panchayat, where I am an incumbent. It was an activity, one of the first of its kind. It was a success, because of the active participation of the students who study GIS and remote sensing, enthusiast community members of wiki and free software domains. All that was possible because everyone can access, use and create geospatial data as granted. We can do great things with the help of volunteer communities, and village panchayats are masters of utilising that possibility. In case of geospatial information, village panchayats are a kind of underprivileged bodies, inside the government. I have portrayed how we applied for spatial data of our area of interest, from the privileged higher government organisations, and how that was denied for us in the first place. Even if we are part of the whole governing structure of this country, we didn’t receive a favourable response till the date. So I am forced to believe that, we are not entitled to access the government resources of geospatial data. Our only hope is the expert people in the communities.

Now, let me examine the current legal and administrative provisions favourable to the village panchayats to have a scientific spatial plan. And my comments on them, follow.

On legality, we would first take the Constitution of India:
—————————————–x—————————————–“Part III Fundamental rights; Right to Freedom 19. Protection of certain rights regarding freedom of speech, etc.- (1) All citizens shall have the right-(g) to practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.”

Comment: People can take up jobs having a geospatial component. So, that they can deal with n number of types of geospatial data available in the web, and eventually become experts in that domain. Their expertise can be utilised for the betterment of the nation.

“Part IVA Fundamental Duties; 51 A. It shall be the duty of every citizen of India- (h) to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform;”

Comment: While doing their business or in their personal life, those experts we met in the previous line, can develop the scientific temper, humanism, and the spirit of inquiry and reform. They could make this nation a better place eventually.

Now we will take the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act 1994:
—————————————–x—————————————–“Section 162.A. Subjects to be dealt with by the standing committees. – (1) The following subjects shall be dealt with by the standing committees of the panchayat, namely: –

Comment: Well, in a village panchayat of Kerala, there will be four standing committees, and the standing committee for development is one among them. as we can see in the above proviso of the K P R Act, spatial planning is the responsibility of this committee. When we combine the fundamental duty – “to develop the scientific temper” in the constitution to this proviso, we can see that spatial planning should be done in a scientific fashion. Every committee, is a group of citizens right?

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005
—————————————–x—————————————–Section 16. (3) Every Gram Panchayat shall, after considering the recommendations of the Gram Sabha and the Ward Sabhas, prepare a development plan and maintain a shelf of possible works to be taken up under the Scheme as and when demand for work arises.

Comment: Okay, we the village panchayat people should prepare a development plan, after considering the recommendations of the Gram Sabha and the Ward Sabhas. Also we should maintain a shelf of possible works. Being an important poverty alleviation scheme, there are associated guidelines and activities take place inline with Mahatma Gandhi NREGA. See:

Under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Village Panchayats need to prepare a development plan – Watershed based master plan more precisely, as detailed in Watershed Works Manual (published in october 2007 by Baba Amte Centre for People’s Empowerment for Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India). It’s two chapters 5 Mapping and 6 Technical Surveys of a Watershed, details the techniques of mapping.

The Common Guidelines for Watershed Development Projects of Government of India, 2008 details two entire chapters about the need of Technology inputs and GIS while preparing plans: Chapter 2. Guiding Principles – V. Capacity Building and Technology Inputs: Current trends & advances in IT & Remote Sensing and Chapter 3. Technology Inputs – Core GIS facilities, DPR – Resource Maps, Cadastral maps etc.

State Perspective and Strategic Plan (SPSP) for Integrated Watershed Management Programme (for IWMP), was submitted to Dept. of Land Resources, MoRD, Government of India By Local Self Government Department, Government of Kerala, which talks about the availability of GIS layers of cadastral map at Information Kerala Mission(IKM) in the scale 1:5000.

So we the people at the village panchayat level need to use GIS and remote sensing techniques, while preparing plans, right? That is the scientific way as well.
—————————————–x—————————————–
Now, let us see a recent law enacted in this year – The Kerala Town and Country Planning Act, 2016. Being a new entrant, many people don’t know much about it. As it says, it is enacted for the promotion of planned development and regulation of growth of urban and rural areas in the state with focus on scientific spatial planning and to secure to their present and future inhabitants, sanitary conditions, amenity and convenience and for other matters connected therewith. It makes the village panchayat into a local planning area, and Section 30 of the act mandates the panchayat to develop a master plan, execution plan and a detailed town planning scheme.

A master plan (section 34) is a comprehensive plan for a local planning area, conceived within the framework of the district level perspective plan, providing long-term policies, programmes and detailed proposals for spatial development of the use of land and development etc.

An execution plan (section 37) is prepared for a period of five years for the local planning area providing the goals, policies, strategies, priorities and programmes for spatial development of the area for the period.

A Detailed Town Planning Scheme (section 44, 45) is a comprehensive plan for a particular area within the local planning area, conceived within the framework of the master plan for the local planning area, providing detailed proposals for spatial development in which the use of land and development shall be carried out.

As per the section 31 of this act, village Panchayat can delegate several parts of these duties to the standing committee for development.

Comment: So we the panchayat people are seriously stepping onto the field of scientific spatial planning.
—————————————–x—————————————–
Also it should be noted that, state government issued a circular to constitute “Sevagram” Gramakendram, and an order is issued framing the detailed work chart of them. It is an extension centre of Village Panchayat in each ward, important statistics, various maps(political, resource, social, drainage, land use) relating to that ward should be displayed for public information. We really need maps depicting ward-level details.
—————————————–x—————————————–
There is a recently launched central government scheme, called Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY). It was launched by the Prime Minister Sri. Narendra Modi on 11 October 2014. Each Member of the parliament can adopt two of the village panchayats in his/her constituency for this programme. It is a rural development programme focusing upon the all-inclusive development of the village panchayats.Para 10 Planning – of the guidelines for SAGY requires to prepare Social Map, Resource map, maps showing Land Use, Water bodies, Irrigation Structures, Physical layout of the land – showing slopes, undulations, drainage patterns etc through participatory approach. It also requires the data collected through the situation analysis should be captured on a GIS platform.

Para 13. Use of Technology & Innovations – of the guideline encourages the adoption and adaptation of technology and introduction of innovations in this programme. One among them is (i). Space applications and remote sensing, which will be used in the planning and monitoring of the programmes. Assets will also be mapped using GIS.

Comment: The government know, the use of geospatial data is an innovative way for getting things done.
—————————————–x—————————————–

Enough. What the hell in this new geospatial information regulation bill badly affect you dirty panchayat man? We are trying to make this country more secure you know?

Wait. I have already described, about the difficulties in getting the geospatial data from government agencies for the use of village panchayat. Our only hope is the skilled volunteers, who know to handle geospatial data.

The section 1(2) and 1(3) will discourage our potential volunteers who might be helpful for us in carrying out our duties described above. No volunteer would have courage to challenge the section 1(3) “Every person shall be liable to punishment under this Act..” clause, as this act (asper the section 1(2)) “shall extend to the whole of India and it applies also to- (a) citizens of India outside India; (b) persons in the service of the Government, wherever they may be; and (c) persons on ships and aircrafts, registered in India, wherever they may be.”

The section 3. Acquisition of Geospatial Information of India.- would discourage the volunteers, as they can’t practically get the special permission from the Security Vetting Authority before they acquire each an every GPS reading, or value addition automatically occurs while they are in the field.

Section 4. Dissemination, Publication or Distribution of the Geospatial Information of India.- would discourage the volunteers, because as a collective we use the open community driven geospatial data visualisation platforms and services, for our work get done. Volunteers practically can’t apply for special permission from the Security Vetting Authority each and every time they update the data on these platforms.

Section 9. Licence to acquire, disseminate, publish or distribute any Geospatial Information of India.- and Section 10. Suspension or revocation of licence.- If these sections got strictly enforced, no volunteer would be there to help any village panchayat for any of the geospatial exercise. Why do they bother to get a licence, and renew to help somebody else?

Section 12. Penalty for illegal acquisition of geospatial information of India.- and Section 13. Penalty for illegal dissemination, publication or distribution of geospatial information of India.- A fine ranging from Rupees ten lac to Rupees one hundred crore and / or imprisonment for a period up to seven years – No volunteer would have this much amount of money to pay unnecessarily to the authorities.

You might say, about the section 37. – Act not to apply to Indian Governmental Bodies.- But, We already have that feeling of “underprivileged” class among the government organs, so this clause will not going to help us in any way.

Being a research student, I use geospatial data available in the numerous web sources as granted, with due attribution. Many researchers keep geospatial data of their area of interest. All of them would suddenly become guilty on the day this bill get enacted. That is as ridiculous as, the consumption of drinking water would become illegal, unless you obtain a newly introduced license from the government. What if you have to obtain a license for each drop of water, and each modification of it like, sharbat, juice, soda etc?

(Data Source:www.gadm.org/)

For home land security, the authorities can make their own better innovative systems using the current technological advancements. Instead, creating hurdles in the natural flow of information would adversely affect the grass-root level technical expertise of the whole nation.

* Assistant Secretary to a Village Panchayat in Kerala, India. - That is my job.
* Also, am a research student at School of Environmental Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University of Kerala.
* I love to experiment with RS&GIS and map the places on OpenStreetMap. I love to draw maps as well.
* I use Free/Open Source Software tools for almost all of my works, and sometimes advocate for it.
* I am somewhat aware of the environmental and ecological activities of the region.
* I volunteer with the L10n/i18n team of Swathanthra Malayalam Computing for Malayalam language.
* I edit Wikipedia, and upload photos, drawings etc. to the Wikimedia Commons.
* I maintain two personal blogs each in Malayalam and in English, and write whatever rubbish I think, whenever I please.
* I love hike / hitch-hike either alone, or with my friends.
* Hmm... I do whatever I feel interesting.